Hernandez Life » photo

We’ve Been Pug’d

Rick — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:14:00 +0000

I know, it’s been a long time, and one day soon I’ll upload all the family photos I’ve taken in the last couple of years. But for today I wanted to let you all know we are Pug owners again. This morning we picked up two pugs, Buffy and Angel, from PLUTO (Pet Lover’s United Together as One), an animal rescue organization on Staten Island. Buffy (the white/fawn colored one) and Angel (the black pug), are both girls and five years old. They were voluntarily rescued from someone who kept them locked together, in a small cage, in their basement for most of their lives. They’ve also been shaved, not a common practice for pugs, but that will grow back. They are both healthy, but Buffy has a scratch on her cornea that should heal within a couple of weeks.

Buffy is the sweet one, laid-back and overweight (kinda like me), and Angel is a real devil, frisky, a little jealous when Buffy gets attention, and currently peeing all over the kitchen. Right now we have the kitchen sealed off, Wee-Wee Pads in place, but hopefully that will change once we housebreak Angel (something that Phaedra nor I have ever done). Phaedra is of course ecstatic, they are both very cute and lovable. When we had previously talked about adopting dogs, Phaedra suggested the name Buffy, which lead me to say, “Then of course we need to name the other Angel”, a reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a movie & TV show (later Angel, a vampire, got his own spin-off).

We are all four very happy. This afternoon Jessica, Rachel, Ben, Eva, & Anthony came over to visit and the pugs were very good around the kids (and adults). The only time they bark is when they get separated. We found this out when Phaedra went to walk each one on their own (that won’t be happening again). Photos can be seen below. A limited set of photos can be downloaded from the link on the lower left sidebar or you can download individual photos from my SmugMug site.

Click on a photo above to go to the gallery

Rachel’s 2008 Wingding

Rick — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:15:45 +0000

Sunday April 27th saw us attending Rachel’s birthday party at Club Mud, a place where they do ceramics, among other things. Lots of children, paint flying everywhere, screaming, laughing, pizza, soda, & cupcakes, what else can a kid want. Amazingly nothing got broken.

Click HERE or on the photo below to see pictures of the festivities, plus a few from Rachel’s actual birthday.

Passover 2008

Rick — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:20:10 +0000

On Saturday April 19th Phaedra and I had a Passover Seder at our home with Eva, Anthony, their children, Aunt Irene, Aunt Liz, and Jonathan. We had good food and good company. Click HERE to see photos of the night, plus a few bonus outdoor pictures of Casa LaPreta from the next evening.

Mark Is At It Again

Rick — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:00:01 +0000

At the time these photos were taken (April 10th), Mark’s wife was expecting and we threw him a baby shower at the office. Since then, on April 16th, baby Paige Mackenzie came into the world.

Mark posted some photos at the following:

http://gallery.mac.com/runforacure#100045

Click on a photo above to go to the galery

LaPreta Family Disney Vacation

Rick — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:23:08 +0000

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this blog. It’s been a busy time for me. I’ve been greatly expanding my presence on the internet (click Hernandez Life Design if you’re interested), but now I want to get back to my beginning, this blog. Over the rest of the week you should see 3 or 4 more postings with what’s been going on in our lives. First up — The LaPreta Family Disney Vacation.

End of March, Eva, Anthony, and the kids drove down to Orlando for a fun filled week. They rented a house with a pool near the attractions and had a blast. The LaPreta’s came back tired, but also tanned and full of great memories. Click the photo below or here to get to the password protected photos of the whole family (don’t worry there is a hint if you forgot the password).

P.S. I only found out last week that the links to our photo site were broken. All is fixed now, easier to access. and much faster. To see all our photos go to photos.hernandezlife.com.

Until you’ve read our reviews…

Rick — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:32:10 +0000

My friend Dmitry and I are collaborating on a new website devoted to reviewing stuff available through the internet. it’s called DontClickIt.com. So far we only have six or seven articles, but it’s growing daily. Our most recent review is about an upscale baby furniture store called PoshTots. Other reviews cover: TurboTax (software), Busted Tees (interesting t-shirts), and PhotoStamps (it’s really cool, thanks Aunt Liz).

As we say on our ‘About Page’:

DontClickIt.com is dedicated to reviews, news, and information, about the best of what is available on the internet for your pleasure and edification. Started in January 2008 as a joint venture between ALEXUSBIZ Corps and HernandezLife, DontClickIt will be your number one stop for all the latest info on what’s worth reviewing on this crazy. mixed up, network known as the World Wide Web.

Yes, our purpose in setting up this website is to make some money, but don’t let that stop you from checking it out. Just click here.

$5 off SmugMug! (Oh, and family-only website reborn)

Rick — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:28:42 +0000

OK, as any of my friends can attest, I’m an Apple fanboy. I’ve worked on Apple computers before there was a Mac, and I’ve just about owned every model of Mac PC they have come out with, except the notebooks and the $10,000 Lisa (although I have used one). I’ve owned a few iPods, an iPhone, I’ve even been known to pay for their software. I love iWeb and .mac, but their web servers are as slow as ~~the Post Office~~ molasses. That was one of the reasons I originally moved this web site from Apple to HostMonster (highly recommend them). I’ve spent the last month trying to make this site faster, and now over the last few days, in a quest for speed, I’ve moved all our photos, both this site’s and our family-only site, from being hosted on Apple, to being a series of galleries on SmugMug (family site ones are still password protected).

There are some downsides. iWeb was a wonderful tool for creating web sites. The integration of iPhoto, iWeb, and .mac, made it real easy to put a sophisticated and complex gallery of photo albums up on the web. I will also miss the nifty mini-slideshow widgets iPhoto could produce (I have kept a couple cause I like them so much).

However it was really really slow. If you were using Internet Explorer as your browser (you really should get Safari or FireFox), or were connecting through DSL or (God forbid) dial-up, well then, you probably gave up on my family site. I apologize for that. That’s what, after a bit of research, led be to SmugMug. You have to pay for the service, but it is a very small yearly amount for the ‘standard’ level service. Sure there are free sites like Flickr out there, but your viewers have to put up with advertisements, and a not as nice interface. Plus SmugMug is really fast. If you are ever interested in using their service, I can get you five dollars off by using coupon code zUHZEirkZ6UDQ in the ‘Referred by’ field on the signup form.

SmugMug gives me unlimited photo storage, so besides now having private backups of all my pics, the public galleries contain many more pictures than before. Also if you see a photo of mine you truly like, besides downloading it for free, you can pay to have it professionally printed ($0.19 for a 4×6), you can even have it made into a mug, an apron, a ceramic tile, keychain, or a slew of other choices. Just so you know, the prices are reasonable because I’ve chosen not to recieve any proceeds from these sales.

So in closing, there have been allot of behind the scene changes on our web sites, plus I had to notch up security in response to a hacking attempt. If you find anything broken, a link not going were it is suppose to, a missing picture symbol, an out right error message, please email me and let me know so I can fix it. Thanks for reading hernandezlife.com

P.S. For the family-only galleries, the password is the same and you no longer need a userid.

Click photos to go to gallery.

Ten Of My Very Favorite Photographs

If you don't know about it go to:
http://www.hernandezlife.com/archive/2007/12/23/visited-miami-ink/" />

Jessie’s Birthday plus 2 Baby Blogs

Rick — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:32:46 +0000

Thursday was Jessica’s 11th Birthday, and on Saturday a group of 20, including 11 of Jessie’s best friends, went out to dinner at Fridays. Afterwards we all trooped back to the LaPreta Residence for presents and merriment. A few of her friends stayed for a sleepover.

Remember, to reach the photos, you need the userid & password. If you’ve forgotten or lost it just call or send me an email and I’ll send them to you.

To see all the photos of the festivities, please go to our private family website family.hernandezlife.com, or just click here to get to the photo gallery directly.

Baby Blogs

In case you missed the emails, the Coopers, both Ashly & Adam, and, Josephine & Joshua, have created Baby Blogs. You can find them at:

And then there were three… by A2 (A Squared)

Baby J by J2 (J Squared, soon to be J Cubed?)

Josephine, Ashly, Josh, Adam, from Phaedra & I, congrats and best wishes!

Click any of the pictures above for larger versions

Catching Up

Rick — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:41:01 +0000

Haven’t had much time to write the last couple of weeks, (plus Phaedra thought I was posting to much,) so here’s a quickie digest of what’s been going on in our lives for the first couple of weeks in this new year.

Here’s what has been happening, in reverse order:

January 13th
Jessica had a 5th grade Siddur party at her sunday school. Click here to see the photos on our family site (password required).

January 12th
We finally get FIOS installed! Yea!!! 20 meg download and 5 meg upload speeds. All the better to post by. And BitTorrent by.

January 11th
News that the RIAA might disappear. Click on cartoon (or most other photos) for larger image.

January 5th
We went out with Eva & Anthony to celebrate Eva’s birthday. Afterwards we picked up their kids from a neighbors house and finished off with a birthday cake. You can see a few pictures of the night here (password required).

January 3rd
Phaedra gets flowers for no reason from me (other than the fact that I love her Truly, Madly, Deeply).

Happy New Year & Deranged Snowmen

Rick — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:37:20 +0000

We hadn’t originally planed on it, but Phaedra & I ended up having an impromptu New Year’s Bash at our home. Three generations of LaPreta’s plus our friends Stacy & Mike helped us bring the new year in. Thanks to Anthony, we’ll have enough cold-cuts & antipasto to last the whole year. Thanks to my overzealousness, we’ll have liquor to last just as long. Photos of the night can be seen on our family website. Phaedra & I wish everyone a great 2008.

As a holiday bonus, at the end of this post, you’ll find some Calvin & Hobbs’ snowman comics, written and illustrated by Bill Watterson.

To see photos of our New Year’s Eve, please go to our private family website family.hernandezlife.com, or, to save time, just click here.